Uhuru, Ruto, Raila lose followers in Twitter purge.

President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto are
among the key personalities who lost some of their following, though
marginally, in the ongoing offloading of dormant and fake followers by social
media giant, Twitter.

President Kenyatta, who is among the most followed person on
Twitter in Africa lost 16,071 of his 3,234,935 followers while Ruto unloaded
7,211 followers. He now has 1,968,355 followers.

Among some of the biggest casualties of the purge include blogger
Cyprian Nyakundi, KFCB CEO Ezekiel Mutua and social media influencer Xtian Dela
who all lost a significant number of Twitter followers.

Nyakundi, who had a little over 1 million followers now has
696,000 followers. NRG radio presenter Dela was left with 521,000 followers from
an impressive one million while the moral policeman Ezekiel was left with a
meager 34,000 followers up from 106,000.

On the global front, President Donald Trump and former President
Barack Obama lost huge numbers of followers.

Obama, who boasts the most Twitter followers of any former
or current head of state, lost around 2.3 million followers from his @BarackObama handle
— from 103.6 million Wednesday to 101.3 million Thursday.

The @realDonaldTrump account had lost roughly 320,000
followers, from 53.4 million to 53.1 million. The official presidential account, @POTUS, saw a lesser drop
of about 60,000 followers.

Oprah Winfrey, who sent her inaugural tweet in 2009, lost
about 1.4 million followers between Wednesday and Thursday evening. Ellen
DeGeneres lost 2 million, leaving her at 76.1 million followers.

Many celebrities, politicians and social media influencers
found their Twitter followings knocked down a few digits Thursday as the
company slashed tens of millions of suspicious accounts from users’ followers.

Aly Pavela, a Twitter spokeswoman, said the work of locking
and eliminating accounts suspected to be fake will continue over the coming
days. The company is taking action to restore trust in its platform.

Here are some of the prominent Kenyan tweeps and how many Followers they lost.

Many users have inflated their followers with automated or
fake accounts, buying the appearance of social influence to bolster their
political activism, business endeavours or entertainment careers.

When the work is done, Twitter expects it will have reduced
the total follower count on the platform by about 6 per cent, a substantial
drop.

Twitter said Wednesday that it would no longer
include Twitter accounts that it had frozen for suspicious or
potentially fraudulent behaviour in the totals of followers
listed on people's profiles. Someone's follower count is a key measure of
online popularity and influence.

The internet has experienced this kind of
bloodbath before. In 2014, during the Instagram Rapture, the
Facebook-owned company slashed deactivated spam accounts and other
accounts that violated its guidelines.

Distraught users begged the company to
stop decimating follower counts as socially media savvy celebrities such as
Justin Bieber mourned the loss of millions of followers.